The subject matter disclosed herein relates to cooling of electronic components. More specifically, the subject disclosure relates to heat sink configurations for packaged electronics.
To facilitate packaging, electronics devices are typically contained within rectangular enclosures. The electronics devices contained in the rectangular enclosures may be air-cooled or liquid-cooled depending on the application. In some applications, for example, power conversion electronics packages, cooling is often accomplished via a cold plate. Cold plates typically include a number of channels through which a liquid cooling medium is circulated. Electronics components such as switches, filters, transformers and inductors are located along either face of the cold plate. Heat generated by the components is conducted to the cold plate and transferred to the cooling medium.
For such power conversion electronics, liquid cooling is typically used. Air cooling of similar cold plate structures typically requires very dense fin structures causing large pressure drops and parallel flow networks resulting in high flow rates. In such cases, airflow is typically pressurized by an externally-located (to the enclosure) fan and ducted into the electronics enclosure. The high flow rates and high pressure drop required results in fan power requirements that typically greatly exceed that of liquid cooling systems having equivalent cooling capacity.